LDS Friends & Foes Rendezvous Tonight

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Just a quick reminder that the 2nd Annual Friends & Foes Rendezvous is tonight from 6 to 8 pm.

https://www.millennialstar.org/the-2nd-annual-friends-foes-rendezvous/

I hope to see some of you there. Especially those who dislike my online interactions but who have never met me in person.

If you won’t be able to attend but would like to meet up some time, please feel free to contact me through the contact form at http://www.sixteensmallstones.org and we can arrange to have lunch.

And whether I see you or not, I hope you have a fantastic General Conference weekend!

J. Max Wilson

Announcing the 1st Semiannual LDS Friends & Foes Rendezvous

This year marks the 10th year that I’ve been involved with LDS blogging. TEN YEARS! Back then it was all new. Nobody knew if you were a dog. I was a guest blogger at the Feminist Mormon Housewives blog. Me!

Since then I have attracted a few Internet antagonists and I have written things that have antagonized others.

While I do not regret my honest, though sometimes clumsy, efforts to stand up for what I believe online, 10 years of watching LDS Internet battles has saddened me.

Between the effects of cyber-disinhibition, which lead people to say things online that they would never say in a face-to-face conversation, and the tendency of Internet discussion to super-size Wiio’s Laws of Communication, we have managed to dehumanize and demean each other in all kinds of ways.

Our online foes are often not real people to us but human-shaped containers into which we have poured all of our Internet-distorted perceptions and disagreements.

And that is why I am inviting you all to the 1st Semiannual LDS Friends & Foes Rendezvous. Continue reading